


and the bible didn't mention us

by gedsparrowhawk (FaceChanger)



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Post Season 2, Pre Season 3, dramatic titles for dramatic fics lmao, in which silver gives flint a haircut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 18:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8765161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaceChanger/pseuds/gedsparrowhawk
Summary: There are nights when John Silver can’t sleep and there are nights when Captain Flint doesn’t sleep and there are a lot of things that neither of them say. Or, the one where Silver helps give Flint a haircut





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_acorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_acorns/gifts).



> also posted on [tumblr](http://gedsparrowhawk.tumblr.com/post/154092646641/and-the-bible-didnt-mention-us)

Some nights, Silver found himself restless, tired of sitting, tired of feeling weak, but not tired enough to sleep. He strapped on the boot and, like the ghosts that haunted the stories they told when he was a boy, paced through the ship, accompanied by only the dull thump of the prosthetic against the wood. What men were awake at these wee hours knew to keep well out of his way, even when he collapsed against the wall every several steps, cursing the Urca treasure and his lies and above all his own stupid, unexpected loyalty.

What a sorry fucking sight he made.

It was past midnight, and yet several hours until dawn, and as Silver prowled through the dark ship, light leaked out from the crack beneath Flint’s door, a thread of gold in the night. Silver paused across from it, catching his breath and leaning down to press a hand to the stump where his leg ended. He stared at the light.

Everyone knew the captain rarely slept, for grief or rage or madness as the rumors went, but by unspoken agreement, Silver and Flint kept their nightly vigils separate, dwelling on different wounds. There was something stretched between them ever since Silver had woken up without a leg, and he didn’t know what would happen if the tension broke.

He heard the creak of a floorboard within and straightened. The door swung partly open, the light falling more fully onto the floor.

“Silver, I know that’s you.” Flint’s voice was quiet, and lit from behind he was little more than a heavy silhouette in the doorway.

Grimacing, Silver stepped into the light. “I was just resting for a moment. What in the hell have you done?”

He could see Flint better now. His hair had been chopped off roughly, so that all that remained were awkward tufts of ginger. Above his left temple, it looked as if he had attempted to shave it off, and a trickle of blood had dried along his cheek. Flint’s face twisted into something wry. “I can hear you thumping about the entire ship.”

Silver shrugged. Flint still had a razor in his hand, opened, it’s blade gleaming in the lamp light. “Perhaps I should muffle it, then.”

Flint shook his head and then sketched a gesture with the hand holding the razor. “Come in.”

Silver eyed the razor warily.

Flint followed Silver’s gaze and looked briefly as if he had forgotten that he held anything at all. He closed it sharply. “Come in,” he repeated.

With the lurch that Silver had not yet figured out how to turn into an even step, he passed Flint and entered the room, sparing a questioning glance at the look of idle frustration that Flint’s expression had fallen into. Flint closed the door behind them.

Scissors lay on the desk, the type a woman might use for sewing. Fallen hair was scattered in locks on the ground, as if Flint had been pacing as he cut it. Silver stopped in the middle of the room and swung around to look at Flint again. “What has possibly possessed you to cut your own hair in the middle of the night?”

Flint visibly bristled. “It doesn’t matter.”

“All right, but,” Silver gestured at Flint’s head. “It looks terrible.”

“Fuck off.”

“You invited me in.”

Flint sighed and crossed to the desk. He picked up the scissors with the same hand that held the razor, and then held them both out to Silver. “Help me, then.”

There was a long moment of silence while Silver stared at Flint, taken aback. He recovered himself. “Shaving cuts do not make for a fearsome pirate,” he said lightly, taking the offered tools.

“Shut the fuck up and just get rid of it,” Flint answered.

Silver made a noise of amusement. “I liked your hair.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion of it.” Flint pulled the chair out with a rough scrape across the ground and fell back into it.

Silver walked around behind him and then stood doing nothing, staring at the closely cropped remnants of Flint’s hair, unsure of how to begin. He slipped the razor into his pocket and cautiously raised the scissors. He began to clip at the remaining longer tufts, and fine hairs floated gently to the floor around him.

“So, you just wanted a change, I suppose?” he asked after a moment, his voice a touch too casual.

Flint grunted. “It was getting too long.”

Silver grinned; his own hair was past his shoulders now. “Why not let it grow out long?”

Under where one of Silver’s hands was braced against his shoulders, Flint made an abortive move to jerk away. “No!” he said.

Silver pulled his hands back and took a half step away. “All right,” he said, placatingly.

Flint rolled his shoulders. “No,” he said again, his voice calmer and some of the tension easing out of is frame, but he did not elaborate further. “Are you going to take all night about this?”

Silver came back, bracing himself against the back of the chair this time, and made no further attempts at small talk as he finished evening the cut of Flint’s hair. Without thinking, he ran a hand over the close-cropped result. It was strange and prickly: the last hints of the bookish gentleness he imagined Miranda Barlow had seen had fled.

Except, and perhaps he imagined it, Flint seemed to lean into his touch a little bit, and there was a sound that might have been a sad sigh, or may have just been an exhale.

His hand stilled in the hollow at the base of Flint’s skull. “You want me to shave it all off?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Silver, can I not even make a decision about the cut of my hair without you questioning it?” Silver would have said Flint sounded fond, if he had thought that was possible, but he also recognized the deflection.

“Do you have the brush?” he asked, instead of pursuing it.

Flint nodded to the cabinet. “Over there. Cream too.”

Silver hobbled over to the cabinet to retrieve the necessary items and then came back. He leaned against the back of Flint’s chair again to work the cream up into a foam and then brush it onto Flint’s head.

He took up the razor, and with a last uncertain glance at Flint, drew it slowly across his head. The only sounds were the creak of the ship, the rasp of the razor, and the unsynchronized sounds of their breathing, suddenly too loud in the closeness of the room. Between each stroke, he wiped the blade against a towel that Flint handed him off the desk. The activity took on an easy, meditative rhythm. Silver found himself aware of how close he was to Flint, how the lamplight gleamed off the bare skin that each razor stroke revealed, how easy it would be to reach down with the razor and slit his throat.

“I can’t sleep,” Silver said. The razor didn’t pause. “I can still feel every single place they broke my leg. It’s gone, but I still feel it. And I think, why the hell didn’t I just give them the list? Didn’t I always say, only as long as it was in my interest? But now, I’m half-useless, and the crew keeps offering to fucking take care of me, and I feel like a pet.”

“You make a decent barber though,” Flint said. “Better barber than cook.”

Silver stilled the razor, surprised at the words and the tone in which they were said, and then actually laughed, just briefly, but genuinely. “Well, there’s that I suppose.”

Flint drew a breath in, like he was preparing to say something more. Silver stayed silent, finishing the last several strokes of the razor, down onto the left temple where Flint had cut himself before. He handed the towel to Flint, and Flint wiped off the remnants of the shaving cream from his head. When he finally spoke, all Flint said was “Thank you,” and Silver was strangely disappointed that there was nothing more forthcoming.

Flint stood and turned to him.

“You look older,” Silver said.

Flint squinted and looked somewhere over Silver’s shoulder. “Miranda said,” he paused and brought a hand up to his head, looking bemused for a half moment when he found it so bare. “Well. I don’t have to worry about it coming loose now.”

Silver eyed him skeptically. “Is that all this is?”

“What else would it be?”

Silver had the odd feeling that a moment had passed, a chance to test the taut thing that had grown up between the two of them, and to, in some small way, make things right. Flint standing in front of him seemed larger than before, grimmer. Whatever demons haunted him were far more frightening than a one-legged pirate pacing a ship at night. And yet, with a newly shaved head and an expression half-way to grief, all Silver could see was a broken man, as unwhole as he himself was.

Silver tried a charming smile, found it didn’t fit, and let it fall. “You should try and sleep.”

Flint blinked and then nodded. “You too.”

Silver reached around and dropped the razor on the desk and then laboriously made his way back to the door. He paused, looked behind him, and saw Flint staring at the razor where it had fallen, half open.

He said nothing more and left.


End file.
